Little Victoria is off preschool for the month, so our schedule is really in chaos. She demands to be *on* me when I am trying to do something with Violet -- something she would not be doing otherwise.

I've tried to adjust our homeschool expectations accordingly, without totally giving up. (Vacation starts officially on the 18th for Red Sea School.) I've totally abandoned Singapore until next year, when we'll start a new grade (but which grade?), and we are focused on fractions/decimals/percents for the rest of the year in math. I'm embarrassed to say that I am using a cheap book on fractions from Walgreens (allegedly grades 5-6) to supplement the intro to fractions we got in Singapore.

History is fading -- Violet seems to be losing interest. Her written summaries are really getting weak again. Some guys had a battle, and this one guy won -- that seems to be the basic formula. We need to get back into how people lived and away from the tribes and battles -- and yet the Western and Arab worlds are getting formed, and some of these events are so decisive in the development of world history.

I think my strategy must be to slow down and get a little more into details of culture, language, etc.

Speaking of language, Violet has announced her intention to learn Japanese and Korean next -- she says she wants to learn all the languages of Asia. Why Asia? Who knows. I am thinking of doing some minor comparative language studies. We recently read in SOTW about the mixing of cultures among China, Japan, and Korea, so we could probably pursue that further.

Otherwise we will be doing lots of holiday crafts up until the 24th. We're doing a paper tree on the wall with homemade paper ornaments -- somehow I have to make this look attractive!

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